Even the wrong war can be fought right

The Americans paid an Australian the high professional tribute of putting him in charge of their own troops for a year during the last Iraq war.

So while Australia at that time had just 400 troops in Iraq, Major-General Jim Molan controlled 300,000. He was chief of operations for the entire allied force that was struggling to assert control over a raging insurgency.

But as remarkable as Molan's experience was, what happened when he returned to Canberra is, perhaps, more startling.

Nothing. That's what happened. Molan had directed the American war machine and the wider coalition in 2004-05 in an intense and intensely controversial war in the biggest conflict in a generation.

Under the command of the US general in charge of the multinational force in Iraq, George Casey, Molan as chief of operations had conducted the first troop "surge", won the second battle for Fallujah, and restored enough order to allow the successful conduct of Iraq's first election.

But when he returned to the headquarters of the Australian Defence Force on Canberra's Russell Hill, nobody wanted to know about it. He was not debriefed on the mission.

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Neither the Defence leadership nor the minister wanted to learn from his experience. At his own insistence, the department eventually debriefed him.

Frustrated, in retirement he wrote a book about the experience, a 2008 bestseller titled Running the War in Iraq. He made some harsh criticisms of Australia's fighting capability.

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It was a country not prepared "to fight a war involving sustained combat," he wrote. The Howard government's Iraq deployment was, he implied, chiefly a flag-waving effort designed to extract political advantage.

Perhaps it's no wonder nobody wanted to debrief him.

"There was a total focus on protecting the troops and very little focus on how to run a modern war," he tells me.

"I think it was due to the fact that we hadn't been involved in a serious fight for many, many years."

Molan did not give his opinion of whether the 2003 invasion itself was the right decision, but, speaking today, he certainly doesn't seem to think it was a terribly good idea.

He argues that Australia needs to get beyond that misbegotten threshold decision to learn from the war itself:

"Regardless of your contention, regardless of what you think of the decision to enter that war, nations must learn.

"You don't want to make two mistakes. You don't want to invade the wrong country, and then lose the war.

"Just because you've invaded the wrong country, it doesn't mean you have to lose the war."

But this is precisely what was happening until just a few months ago. It's clear that the 2003 invasion led by George W. Bush destabilised a stable country. That was the first threshold mistake. Everything that followed was an attempt to restore stability.

Within that stabilisation effort, critical mistakes were made by the US-led occupation, and Molan is eloquent on those mistakes. But then the second threshold mistake was to withdraw all coalition forces in 2011 and to entrust the country entirely to its elected prime minister, the corrupt and brutal sectarian havoc-wreaker Nouri al-Maliki.

Today's coalition military operation in Iraq, the new counterterrorism campaign in Australia and around the world, is a frantic effort to recover from that blunder.

With Australian aircrews flying Super Hornet combat missions into Iraq today, and Australian special forces preparing to enter Iraq in the next week or so, it's timely to consider the lessons of Molan's experience.

He wants to put himself at the service of the nation once more, this time in politics. He's seeking Liberal Party endorsement to stand for election to the Senate from NSW. If he is elected, he'll be the first former general to sit in Australia's Parliament since 1932.

A distinguished World War I commander, Sir Thomas William Glasgow, was the last. Glasgow's political career, alas, was not so distinguished. He served as defence minister between the wars but his economic views during the Great Depression were flat wrong and he was defeated.

It's unremarkable for retired generals to stand for high office in the US, and Indonesia's last president was a former general, but in Australia it is a rare event.

Risking your life for your country is one thing; standing for parliament seems to involve risks that even distinguished soldiers are not often willing to take.

Tony Abbott would doubtless welcome Molan to the bosom of the government. After his military service, Molan was the co-author with Scott Morrison of the Coalition's Operation Sovereign Borders policy. Abbott appointed him his envoy for explaining the policy to regional governments.

He later took a post as an adviser to Abbott's defence minister, David Johnston, to work on the forthcoming defence white paper. Molan resigned after just three weeks. He hasn't denied the assertion that Johnston is the problem, but he has kept mum about the episode.

Molan is an impressive figure, but not flawless. He was a can-do officer, but didn't make it to become the chief of army. The reason, says a former Defence colleague, is that although he's charismatic and competent, "he has very strong opinions and he's not a very good team player. With Jim it's 'my way or the highway'."

What are the lessons Molan thinks Australia and its allies need to learn?

First, a lesson about the great and powerful friend. Molan is an admirer of US military capability, but he holds the big decisions of US military strategy in low regard, under both Republican and Democrat presidents.

"The greatest failure" of the US-led occupation of Iraq, says Molan, "was the provision of inadequate troops to stabilise the country. All the problems stemmed from that."

It's simple brute mathematics, he says. A competent counterinsurgency needs 20 to 25 soldiers per 1000 head of population. For Iraq's 28 million, that meant an occupying force of 300,000 to 500,000.

The US generals at the time advised the Bush administration to deploy a minimum of 300,000. Instead, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent half that number.

"His deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, said 'I cannot understand how you'd need more troops to occupy a country than to invade it.' My God!" exclaims an exasperated Molan.

Eventually, after two surges of US forces and a painstaking build-up of a new Iraqi army, there were enough forces to supply an average of 28 soldiers per 1000 people. "And guess what we achieved? Stability!"

Then there was Barack Obama's decision to withdraw all US forces in 2011. It was not actually Obama's choice. Iraq's prime minister, Maliki, refused to agree to a status of forces agreement to allow the US to remain.

"There are those who say Obama should have pushed harder," says Molan. Among them is Hillary Clinton. "We have residual US forces in Germany, in Japan, in Korea to this day yet, after these awful eight years, with 4500 Americans killed and 100,000 to 150,000 Iraqis killed, we're prepared to walk away?"

Not for long. "Maliki didn't want the Americans there because he wanted to be free to pursue corruption, cronyism and sectarianism. He replaced all the commanders we'd trained over eight years and replaced them with cronies."

Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, waged vicious covert sectarian war against the country's Sunnis. So when Iraq's army was challenged by a furious Sunni fightback under the banner of Islamic State, half of that army disappeared.

The clear implication? Australia cannot trust that the US political leadership of either party will pursue good strategy. Australia must exercise independent judgment and try to shape sensible US policy rather than meekly acquiesce to dumb.

Second, Molan's lessons for today's war against the so-called Islamic State. On the threshold question, "Is this a cause worth soldiers dying for on a large scale? I think it is.

"We have two and a half thousand years of history based on Greek and Roman culture that's given us values of religious freedom, a secular society, in Australian terms the 'fair go.' They are under challenge if we allow organisations like IS to win.

"If they win, it will embolden every extremist group throughout the world. Then if we get figuratively bogged down" in fighting back, "other countries may see that as an opportunity. The sooner we can solve this and reimpose the rule of law, the better."

And the strategy question? Molan thinks it's the right one. "This is winnable," he says, "if," he says, and it's a very big if, "we can rely on the Iraqi army." About half the army survived the Maliki government. The Abadi government, with training and assistance from the US and Australia and others, has to now stand a full army up again.

"Ultimately, this fight can only be won by a combination of land and air power, and only the Iraqis should ultimately provide the soldiers on the ground," says Molan. But for that to occur, there is a single, vital ingredient, and it's not something that can be made in a munitions factory or dropped from a plane.

"It's all about trust, and trust has to come from the central government. What ultimately underpins Iraqi fighting power will be trust between the central government and its citizens, its soldiers, the tribes, the sects and the Kurds."

This, he warns, could take years. Or never happen. In that case, says Molan, the coalition faces a "strategic decision point." So-called Islamic State is eminently beatable, he says.

And Molan offers a big lesson for Australia. He says that he spent 30 years in the military being told he'd never fight in the Middle East. "You take a big risk if you think the next 30 years strategically will be like the last 60. There are big changing power relativities and history tells us conflict is more likely.

"We have to prepare, and the best way to do that is from a position of strength." Molan has a lot to say, even if the defence department didn't especially want to hear it.